1. What is the purpose of the project?

2. What type of end product(s) is to be delivered from the plant?

3. What is required to make this product(s), and
4. How much of each product is required per shift, each day, week or annually?
5. What equipment is required, and
6. What type of construction is required?
7. What design parameters are needed to minimize production and utility costs?

Production Rates

Production capacity needs to be based on initial requirements but should also be estimated for future
increases or ultimate production goals. Usually the production rate is based on tonnes required and the
desired time to produce them resulting in an average “tonnes per hour” capacity. Table 2 (page 66) shows
a typical way to determine immediate and future production rates. The initial capacity is 240 tonnes in an
eight-hour day.

The highest required rate is 48 tonnes per hour (TPH), but this is an average. To allow for interruptions in
production, an efficiency factor not exceeding 80% is recommended. Thus, the actual design capacity
should be 48 TPH/0.80, which calculates to 60 TPH.

Although the initial design capacity is only 37.5 tph, the mill should be designed to accommodate the
ultimate design capacity of 60 tph. The controlling factor in the design is usually the batching and mixing
system. Other cost center equipment may be installed in increments such as grinding or pelleting
systems.

Receiving

The system for receiving bulk ingredients should have a minimum capacity of twice the production rate to
allow for time variations in truck and rail car arrivals and unloading. The receiving system should have the
smallest pit possible that is just steep enough to move the ingredients from the receiving grate opening to
the receiving conveyor. Using this design, the bulk material fills the pit and backs up to the outlet opening
on the truck trailer or rail car causing a flood flow condition. Since the only free falling material occurs at
the initial opening of the vehicle outlet gate, fugitive dust is very minor and a dust control system is usually
not needed.

Not requiring a dust control system on a bulk receiving pit is a substantial cost savings in installation and
operation.

The bulk receiving system for the mill we sized above should initially be 30 TPH x 2 = 60 TPH, but must
be able to handle up to 90 TPH at maximum capacity. The cost to install a 90-tph system initially may be
comparatively small versus replacing the original system or installing a second system later.

The bulk receiving system may require higher capacity if hours of operation are less than the hours of
production for the facility, or ingredient receiving is done in large quantity over a much shorter time period.
An example would be if a truckload of the ingredient is used daily, but that ingredient is received only one
day a week. Much higher capacity may also be required if grain or another ingredient is received in unit
trains with unloading time limitations. A 110-car grain train requiring unloading in 15 hours or less would
need a receiving capacity of approximately 40,000 bushels per hour.

For ingredients received by bag or bulk tote, adequate warehouse space must be provided to store the
ingredients until they are used. This requires human labor as well as mechanical handling systems such
as forklift trucks or bag belt systems.
Grinding

Ingredient sizing is accomplished by using a roller mill or a hammer mill. A roller mill is one choice for
grinding grains to smaller particle sizes. The coarseness and particle size range is determined by the
number of roll pairs the product is passed through. For coarse grain grinding, a single pair of rolls may be
used, but for finer particles a stand with two or even three pairs of rolls may be used. When using a roller
mill to grind to smaller particle sizes, the particle size range will be narrow. A roller mill uses significantly
less horsepower than a hammer mill of the same capacity but will not work on soft or fibrous materials.

A hammer mill may be used to grind ingredients to very small particle sizes, but the particle size range is
wider and creates significantly more very fine particles than a roller mill. A hammer mill may be used to
grind most ingredients that require sizing including grains, pellets, soft ingredients and fibrous materials.
When using a hammer mill, an air assist system may be installed to pull air through the mill inlet and out
through the screen. This system increases the hammer mill capacity by 10%-15% using the same size
mill drive and helping reduce the amount of unnecessary fine particles by helping get the screen opening
size particles out of the mill sooner. The horsepower required for the added air assist system is small and
much less than the power required for the same increase in capacity of a mill without an air assist system.

When designing a grinding system, the amount of ground ingredients required for each formulation must
be determined. Generally, ingredients requiring grinding do not exceed 60%-65% of the batch weight.
Based on this, the grinding system should be at least 70% of the design capacity for the facility.
Significant energy savings may be gained by using the coarsest possible particle size. If the particle size
desired is 600 microns, it is foolish to grind the material to a much finer size such as 400 microns.

In some cases, it may be appropriate to use larger capacity grinding equipment so that the system does
not operate as many hours as the production line. These decisions are based on having sufficient ground
products available when needed. In some cases, two grinding lines are installed, the first to support the
initial capacity requirements with a second system added for the final capacity requirements.